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EVE Online braces for largest conflict ever

EVE Online’s bracing for what could possibly be its largest conflict in history. It’s going to be the biggest coalition, The Imperium, going head to head against a temporary alliance of smaller groups, the Moneybadger Coalition.

The massively multiplayer online game is famous for being one very complex, tedious and serious business. Set in a science fiction sandbox universe, players get to conquer and control territories and run a virtual economy run also by players. The game features more than enough lore that it even has its own history book called A History of Great Empires of Eve Online, made by journalist and author Andrew Groen. Not to mention, Eve battles are measured in real-world dollars since in-game currency has real-world value. Setting illegal real-money transactions aside, the game also allows usage of its in-game currency Isk to be gambled with in out-of-game-sites.

So what’s the big deal about the war? The Imperium, previously known as CFC or the ClusterFuckCoalition, with 40,000 players has been the largest organization in EVE for the longest time. Over the course of history, EVE has accumulated a lot of enemies, so many that there’s even a timeline for it. So in the midst of this, The Imperium set up a lot of tithing agreements wherein other coalitions pay The Imperium hefty sums of “protection money”. So here you got a classic example of a galactic empire from some big-budget sci-fi movie, where fictional galactic wars and real money equals really serious business.

In an interview with Polygon, The Imperium’s leader Alex “The Mittani” Gianturco shares,

“We thrive on having our enemies be completely unhinged and hating us.”

“We figured out a scalable way to conquer the galaxy without taking any territory, which is why our enemies, who have all congregated on r/eve, have completely lost the plot and are trying to manufacture something, anything to stop us — but the antagonism just makes our guys more aggressive.”

So if your empire has enemies, separatists, and other parties who’re in it either for prize or whatever reason, and only now ganging up together under one flag to take down your rule, then you’ve got yourself a huge-scale war. The Moneybadger Coalition sparked the flames of war at the south eastern edge of The Imperium at a system called M-OEE8 earlier this week. The battle involved over 3500 ships, with The Imperium’s now ex-member coalition Circle of Two suffering defeat. Developers at CCP even said the game has just seen its largest number of player-vs-player kills in the battle.

“At its most basic level I believe that the Coalition wants this big, monolithic structure of The Imperium — of the CFC — gone,” says Mark “Seleene” Heard, veteran EVE player and former developer at CCP. “Like any empire that lasts too long, hubris starts to bite you in the ass. You start to make mistakes. You start to not appreciate the people that keep you in power.

The Battle of M-OEE8 marks the early stages of what’s now being dubbed as The Northern War. For now it’s The Imperium versus The Moneybadger Coalition without any certainty which side would tip the scales. Another huge coalition called the Drone Region Federation so far has remained neutral and is expected to change the game if ever they do decide to join in.